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Friday, April 29, 2016

The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 27, 2016
By Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz

The chancellor of the University of California at Davis,
Linda P.B. Katehi, was placed on administrative leave on Wednesday night,
pending an investigation of information that “raises serious questions” about
whether she may have violated university policies, according to a statement
from the office of the president of the University of California system.

The system’s president, Janet Napolitano, said in the
statement that she would appoint an independent, outside investigator to
compile a report before the start of the next academic year and that the
provost at Davis, Ralph J. Hexter, would fill the chancellor’s post on an acting
basis. “I am deeply disappointed to take this action,” Ms. Napolitano said.

The concerns regarding Ms. Katehi, the statement said,
include “questions about the campus’s employment and compensation of some of
the chancellor’s immediate family members, the veracity of the chancellor’s
accounts of her involvement in contracts related to managing both the campus’s
and her personal reputation on social media, and the potential improper use of
student fees.”

Friday, April 22, 2016

At UC Davis, where student activists still hope to oust Chancellor Linda
Katehi, critics of their activism are using concepts like “safe space” and
“hostile climate” to attack it.

The student activists had occupied a small room outside Katehi’s office,
planning to stay until their chancellor resigned or was removed from her post.
By the time they left 36 days later, a petition that now bears roughly 100
signatures of UC Davis students and staff were demanding that they prematurely
end their occupation, criticizing their tactics, and alleging a number of grave
transgressions: The signatories accused the student activists of sexism,
racism, bullying, abuse, and harassment, complaining that many who used the
administration building “no longer feel safe.” The student activists say that
those charges are unfair.

The conflict illustrates a pattern that campus observers are likely see
more and more in coming years: Insofar as progressives succeed in remaking
campuses into places unusually sensitive to psychological harms, where
transgressing against “safe spaces” is both easy to do and verboten,
confrontational activism will no longer be viable.